QIAGEN Acquires RNAture’s Portfolio of Nucleic Acid Purification Products from Hitachi Chemical Research Center, Inc.
Products Address High-Throughput mRNA Purification for Gene Expression Analysis
Venlo, The Netherlands – May 2, 2005 - QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt, Prime Standard: QIA), the world’s leading provider of innovative enabling technologies and products for the separation, purification and handling of nucleic acids and proteins today announced the acquisition of the world-wide, exclusive rights and licenses to manufacture and market the complete portfolio of RNAture’s nucleic acid isolation products from Hitachi Chemical Research Center, Inc. RNAture, Inc., is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi Chemical Research Center, Inc. Pursuant to the companies’ agreement Hitachi Chemical Research will transfer all current commercial operations to QIAGEN.
QIAGEN believes the RNAture product line and associated technology to be a natural extension of QIAGEN’s world leading technology portfolio for preanalytical sample preparation. QIAGEN today markets a broad portfolio of preanalytical solutions for RNA analysis and the RNAture product line addresses a unique segment of this large market. In combination with QIAGEN consumable and automation technologies, the RNAture solutions have the potential to provide a new dimension of value to QIAGEN customers in high-throughput gene expression analysis and siRNA in research and drug development. Financial details were not disclosed. QIAGEN does not expect a material change to its outlook for 2005 based on this transaction as the products are still in an early stage of introduction.
RNAture’s product portfolio focuses on mRNA isolation products and comprises solutions for rapid, efficient and specific capture of cellular poly(A)+ RNA in the wells of specially-treated microplates. The products for medium, high and ultra high-throughput demands are currently marketed under the brand name GenePlate®. GenePlate® employs a unique immobilization technology to coat surfaces with oligonucleotides which allow rapid and direct capturing of target mRNA. The direct selection of poly(A)+ RNA provides researchers with a more defined mRNA sample, which leads to improved sensitivity and reproducibility. The technology allows mRNA isolation, cDNA synthesis and PCR in the same well in three different formats: 8-well stripes, 96-well and 384-well plates. RNAture’s products provide an easy-to-use and cost effective method for direct mRNA isolation and cDNA synthesis in an automation-friendly design for simplify high-throughput target validation, gene-expression analysis and compound screening.
Gene Silencing, or RNA interference (RNAi) uses target-specific sequences of short interfering RNA molecules (siRNA molecules) to knock-down, or ’silence’ targeted genes to infer their function. RNAi is a developing technology used for target validation and compound screening in drug development as well as for studying gene expression analysis in academic and clinical research. The new product line based on RNAture’s purification technology for mRNA also is expected to seamlessly integrate into QIAGEN’s broad gene silencing product portfolio. The speed and ease-of-use of mRNA isolation with this technology makes it a perfect tool for simple and reproducible medium- to ultra high-throughput RNAi experiments.
‘We are very pleased to add an attractive platform technology for specific RNA molecule selection to our leading product portfolio in preanalytical sample management,’ said Dr. Ulrich Schriek, QIAGEN’s Vice President Corporate Business Development. ‘The technology is highly automation-friendly, minimizes well-to-well and plate-to-plate variability and standardizes the purification and assay procedure in these applications as preparation and assay are possible in the same plate.’
QIAGEN Group (Nasdaq: QGEN, Frankfurt: QIA)
